


The continuing adventures of the starship Avenger

by Skoll



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Also because Frostiron, Because Natasha's Chief of Security and the red shirts are more scared of her than death, Bruce could give McCoy a run for his money when it comes to being a long suffering CMO, But Mostly Plot, But he's a rocking Chief Engineer, FrostIron - Freeform, I don't know how Tony managed to not get thrown out of Starfleet academy, Loki switched for Thor on the Avengers for legitimate plot reasons, M/M, No red shirts were harmed in the making of this fic, Not crack I promise, Star Trek AU, Steve would make a fantastic Starfleet captain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-12 13:19:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skoll/pseuds/Skoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows the story of the Avenger and her crew, about their incredible victory against most of the Klingon armada and their pivotal role in the end of the Federation-Klingon war--except, this isn't that story.</p><p>This is the story no one asks about: the story of how a playboy genius engineer, an alien doctor with a dangerous reaction to rage, two former assassins, a maybe-too-rule-abiding captain and a war criminal somehow limped their way into being one of the most famous starship crews to ever explore the universe.</p><p>And frankly, as Tony will be only too happy to tell you himself, that story is more interesting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes, before the story starts:
> 
> First, canon purists, I'm sorry. This story is a mishmosh of reboot-style stardates, TOS history points, MCU Avengers as the senior staff, and random comics Avengers standing in for whatever random crew members I might need to mention. I did pick and choose elements deliberately, and if anyone would like to discuss them with me, I'm always happy to answer comments either here or on my tumblr. http://skollwolf.tumblr.com/
> 
> Also, this story mostly goes out to chaperoned, who made me laugh at two in the morning when I couldn't figure out stardates. I hope this was what you're were looking for in a fic. *grins*
> 
> Lastly, I don't know how long this is going to be, but I'm hoping to get it finished before I start writing for the Frostiron big bang. We'll see whether or not that's feasible.
> 
> That all said, enjoy.

prologue: Stardate 2267.30

The Avenger rocks under direct fire from a Klingon warbird; in the engine room, Tony's nearly sent flying over a Jeffries tube before a familiar hand steadies him. “Careful, Stark,” Loki's voice comes, low and smooth, from right next to Tony's ear, and at any other time—but no, apparently being attacked by Klingons is enough to put Tony Stark off thinking of sex, who knew.

“Thanks,” he says, absentmindedly, as Loki withdraws his hand. About sixty percent of his brain is focused on the repair that's just been interrupted, with the other forty percent broken down into running scenarios of what could go wrong next, and anger. Tony braces himself, reaches for a plier with one hand and the connections he was fixing with the other, and realizes this leaves him exactly zero hands for his comm. Cursing under his breath, Tony says, “Jarvis, buddy, can you spare your attention from the nanobot repairs and patch me through to the bridge?” Tony's perfectly developed, extremely capable AI, reduced to a ridiculously overly skilled communicator—Tony really isn't liking today, at all.

“Certainly, sir,” Jarvis says, polite as always despite the fact that he's singlehandedly carrying out more tasks than the rest of Tony's engineering staff combined, and after a moment the nearest console to Tony buzzes dully with an open line to the bridge.

“Cap,” Tony says, “I shouldn't have felt that, what exactly have you been doing to my shields? I designed those shield generators to hold up to everything short of—actually, no, I programmed those shields to hold up to _everything_ , what the fuck are you doing up there?”

The only answer Tony gets is a muffled curse, the sound of the Klingon shots connecting much more loudly than they sound down in engineering, and then the silence of his communication line being cut. That's alright, though: Tony's brain runs the question and comes back with an answer before anyone on the bridge can reestablish the link to give him one. “Loki!” he calls, unsure of where his second-in-command's wandered off to. “We've got an overload in—” and Tony trails off, because as soon as he raises his eyes briefly from his repair, it's pretty obvious that Loki's already in the middle of fixing what Cap fucked up. Tony laughs, out of sheer adrenaline-boosted gratefulness that he's _finally_ found someone good enough to keep up with him, and Loki's green eyes dart up to meet his at the sound. “You're fantastic, I really wish I could blow you right now,” Tony says, because, hey, it's true, and he keeps looking just long enough to see Loki's pupils dilate briefly with arousal. 

Then Loki raises one eyebrow, in mixed irritation and fondness, and looks back down at his work. “If we survive this, then I will hold you to that promise,” he calls out, loudly enough to be heard in return, “and if not I will remember you wasted valuable time trying to seduce me, and make your afterlife extremely unpleasant, Stark.” Tony laughs again—sometimes it's worth the three wasted seconds to laugh during a crisis, it actually makes him more productive afterward—and then he seals the section he's finished repairing and heads towards the warp drive. Three seconds wasted hitting on his second are alright, but Loki's got a point; they don't have any more time than that to spare.

He's got a couple of his staff working on the drive already, but there's Starfleet engineering training and then there's Stark talent, and frankly the two aren't comparable. Tony taps an engineer out, sending the guy off to do the minor repairs that would be wasted on Tony right now, and gets to work on getting the Avenger capable of more than a crawl. 

Tony gets lost in the work, completely oblivious to everything but the intricate inner workings of his ship, and would've happily stayed there for the rest of the battle if—

“Jarvis, comm the bridge, now,” Tony says, sharply, and as soon as the line opens he snaps, “Did you just take us through a mine field?” It's maybe not the most professional tone he's ever used, but Klingons, mine fields and etiquette just don't mix.

Finally, the bridge comms him back, and Steve says, voice tight, “A little busy here, Tony—”

Tony cuts him off. “Unless the entire Klingon armada is after us, you warn me before you take _my goddamned ship_ into a mine field!” He doesn't think it's unreasonable; Tony's been doing a really good job of sharing his toys where this ship is concerned, but at the end of the day the Avenger is his baby, and he takes offense at people trying to cripple her.

The ship rocks again, and then Barton says, voice falsely cheerful with a note of extreme concentration underneath, “So, about that 'the entire Klingon armada' thing...”

Oh, well. Fuck.

“Right,” Tony says, “so I'm going to break physics and get us warp 12 now, Stark out.”

The rest of the battle, in Tony's memory, goes a little something like this: equations, rerouted wires, unnecessary subroutines stripped and power coaxed and cursed and forced into flowing just how Tony wants it to, Loki's hands next to his, Loki's mind and words and suggestions twining in with Tony's thought process, the rocking force of blows, and the way Tony only knows they won because of the sudden silence, broken only by the engine's hum.

“There's a good girl,” Tony tells the warp drive, when everything's over.

And then he maybe sort of unceremoniously passes out.

…

What they don't know then, in the aftermath of the battle—and won't know until two weeks later, when impulse power alone gets them back to the nearest starbase—is that this is a battle that will go down in history: it might be Kirk and the Enterprise that bring about the end of the Federation-Klingon war, but it's Rogers and the Avenger that win the Federation respect from the Klingons, and respect goes a long way in the treaties that come out of it. 

When they finally do stumble off the Avenger onto the starbase, every single one of them bearing some sort of cut, burn or other wound, they're surprised as hell to be hailed as heroes. Tony, especially, doesn't expect to get the sort of the attention he does, considering all he did was pull off some extremely dangerous modifications that, honestly, he'd been dying to try out for about three years but had never had the excuse for. It's not that Tony's necessarily against being famous—or, well, more famous—but all he really wants to do in the aftermath of that battle is sleep somewhere that isn't sickbay, wake up to fuck Loki, and sleep again, so he's maybe a little brusque when people try to interview him.

Still. Suddenly, they're famous, beloved and practically venerated: the daring captain, the pilot who never missed a shot, the steady Chief of Security who directed her people perfectly, the genius engineer and his alien second in command who broke all conventions of warp physics to save their ship, and the calm, collected doctor who pieced them all back together when it was done.

The first time Tony hears them described that way in the news, he laughs for long enough that his chest starts to hurt, and Loki pushes him off the couch in a half-conscious fit of pique.

…

See, the thing is, the crew of the Avenger had been in the news before, at the start of their mission three years ago, and that depiction had gone a little differently:

The young, inexperienced captain, who, it was hinted, valued the rules over the lives of his crew. The pilot with a dark, mostly-classified past, and the Chief of Security who made the pilot's past look downright family friendly. The CMO who, at any moment, could lose himself to rage, turn into a monster, and harm not only himself but also his patients. The playboy engineer who couldn't keep it in his pants if it killed him, and his war criminal of a second in command.

And the thing is, the thing that makes the whole situation so funny, is that most of that was even arguably true.

Tony bets, when the Avenger and her crew go down in the history books, it's going to be one of those stories that skips to the climax—the nearly pyrrhic victory against the body of the Klingon armada, the daring feats and the perfect crew—without ever really mentioning the beginning. 

Tony's not sure he approves of that. No matter how rough a start the crew might have gotten off to, the Avenger, and life on her, has been fascinating right from the start.

It's possible Tony's a little biased, though—he was, after all, the one who built her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys. Thanks so much for all the lovely comments and kudos on last chapter. Eventually I'm going to make time to go back and respond to everyone, but as it stands, please know all your opinions were deeply appreciated.
> 
> A few (long, sorry) notes, before the chapter: For the purposes of this fic, I decided to give Tony some Betazoid heritage on his mother's side. This is for two reasons. One, that Betazoids have a slightly longer life span than humans, canonically, so I can more easily write this story as happening over an eight year time period without needing to write Tony as aging as greatly as humans would over that span (because I picture him as being mid-thirties during this chapter, but I still want him to be mostly a contemporary to the other Avengers eight years later.) Secondly, because Betazoids have a cultural tradition of getting married naked, and I really enjoy picturing Tony tormenting everyone on the Avengers with the threat that someday he'll propose to Loki and insist on a Betazoid wedding. Maybe this makes me a ridiculous person, but whatever.
> 
> Also, throughout this fic, if Tony's referring to a person of unknown gender (like a pilot inside of a ship, for instance), he's going to be using the gender neutral pronouns of ze (instead of he/she), zir (instead of hers/his), and zim (instead of her/him.) This won't come up often, in fact it might not ever happen beyond the two times these pronouns are used in this chapter, but I figured I'd give a heads up. I like the idea that by the 23rd century, the male pronoun is no longer just substituted in for indeterminate gender.
> 
> Lastly, this chapter is set slightly later than the newest Star Trek movie, so the events of that movie are alluded to by characters within the fic. There are no major spoilers, and the movie is only referenced in passing, but if you haven't seen the movie and are confused by those events, feel free to ask and I'll happily explain.
> 
> That all said, enjoy.

Stardate 2259.55 – eight years earlier

Tony's actually kind of proud of himself—apparently, he's trained Fury well enough that Fury skips the bureaucratic runaround and asks Tony directly for favors these days. Well. Where trained is defined as 'conditioned through years of Tony foisting his comm answers off on Pepper, ignoring the usual channels, and generally being an uncooperative shit whenever Fury called him in through the proper procedure', that is. Tony's willing to take that definition and run with it; the pride's the important thing here, anyway.

Point being, these days, he knows Fury needs something from him when Fury shows up at Tony's doorstep himself—or, in today's case, walks straight into Tony's workshop, bypassing the front door altogether. Tony knows Fury's there, of course—ever since the whole mess with Obadiah, no one goes anywhere in Tony's home without Tony knowing exactly who and where they are—but really, he thinks Fury would be disappointed if Tony made things easy for him.

So Tony keeps working through Fury's entrance, his music blasting and his fingers flying, the schematics for his newest shuttle model coming together nicely. “Sir,” Jarvis says, after Tony makes no move to stop and pay attention to Fury, his AI's voice ringing out more loudly than even Tony's music can muffle, “Admiral Fury here to see you.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, and shuts his schematics down. “Drop the music, Jarv.” Obligingly, Jarvis cuts Tony's music, and the sudden silence in the workshop is nearly deafening by comparison. Tony claps his hands together and spins around, leaning back against his workstation and throwing Fury his best arrogant grin. “Fury, did you miss my pretty face that badly?”

Fury snorts, and says, “Hardly. I had an excuse to not see you for three months, Stark, you think I'd be here if it wasn't important?”

“Sorry, Fury, this is my vacation. All important matters have to go to Pepper so I can properly ignore them until I'm back in space, and then properly ignore them _because_ I'm back in space—”

“Stark,” Fury cuts in, and crosses his arms over his chest, the absolute picture of not being willing to take any of Tony's shit. “I need you to build me a ship.”

Something in Tony goes a little cold at the direction he thinks this is about to go in, and he covers it up by smiling even more brightly and saying, “Commercial transport just not doing it for you these days? I can see why. It must be so time consuming, trying to run the universe in your time off—so many people to spy on, so many interplanatary political situations to pull strings in, so little time, right? If it helps, I've got a new shuttle coming out soon, smoothest ride from here to—”

“A warship,” Fury says, his voice pitched just right to cut through Tony's babble. The word nearly echoes in Tony's workshop, or maybe Tony just thinks it does.

Tony doesn't let his smile waver. “I'm not in that game anymore,” Tony says, his voice perfectly even and friendly. He's not thinking about Obadiah, not thinking about the three hours he spent floating in the wreckage of his ship, watching his oxygen levels drop and waiting for decompression to just kill him already, before the Orion mercenaries realized who he was and decided to keep him instead. He isn't thinking about it, he isn't—fuck. “Now, if that's all—”

“For someone who's done making weapons, it's strange how often ships you're posted on come back with upgraded firing capacity,” Fury says, perfectly deadpan, his single good eye watching Tony like a hawk.

“That's life or death,” Tony shoots back, “and it's just modifications to weapons someone else already built. What you're asking for is a brand new toy to start a war with, Fury, and no matter how much you push, I'm done with warmongering.”

“You're a member of Starfleet, Lieutenant Commander Stark.” Nobody ever uses Tony's official rank unless they want something from him; when Fury uses it, the words _court martial_ hang in the air behind them without even having to be voiced. “I could always make it an order.”

Tony stiffens, done pretending to play nicely with others. “You could, Admiral,” Tony says, all but spitting out the rank, “but I think we both know how that would turn out. I think the media would be shocked to hear about how their peacekeeping armada's been lighting fires and inciting wars across the galaxy, wouldn't you? And, sure,” Tony says, waving a hand dismissively, “you'd court martial me, and I'd either get jail time or a dishonorable discharge—maybe if I really pissed you off I'd walk down a dark alley one night and never walk back out. But in the end, the 'Fleet would be down one of its best engineers, and you still wouldn't have your ship.” Tony grins, baring his teeth, and says, “Are you really certain you want to give me that order, Admiral?”

Fury just raises one dark eyebrow, and says, “I said I could make it an order, Stark. Not that I intended to. Because I think you're going to build the ship of your own free will, no order necessary.” 

It's Tony turn to raise an eyebrow at that, expression completely incredulous. “Well,” Tony says, settling back further against his workstation. “This ought to be good.”

Completely undaunted—and unsurprisingly so—Fury says, “I'm not starting a war. I'm trying to be ready for one we've already started. The Klingons were already pushing us before our flagship made a noticeable stop at their homeworld. There's still noise from the Romulans that suggests they might be up for a little bloodshed, too. With Vulcan destroyed, the Federation is at its weakest point in centuries, and every single one of our enemies knows it. Like it or not, we're headed for a war, Stark.” 

“And you honestly think I'll believe that arming you with a big stick will do anything but bring war on faster?” Tony asks, because seriously, how stupid does Fury think he is?

“I think,” Fury says, with the tone of someone who thinks he's already won, “that you've got a lot of friends out there in space, Stark. Are you comfortable sending Captain Rhodes out to war in 'a bucket of bolts that uses more energy on its replicators than its engine core?'” Those are Tony's own words, from when they had to bring the ship back in for refit a week ago—in the five minutes that followed those words, he also claimed the ship would be better off in battle if they took suits into space and tried using phasers, rather than hoping the photon torpedos would fire on any given day. He has no doubt that Fury'll throw those words back in his face next, if Tony doesn't play along now.

Tony's voice is like ice when he says, “If that's supposed to be a threat, Fury—”

“Not a threat,” Fury says, and his voice is perfectly calm, “a fact.” And Fury believes that, Tony can tell. Fury's a hundred percent sure it's going to come to war, not just bullshitting this to make Tony play along. And that...

Tony breathes out, deeply, and then makes himself say, “I have conditions.” Fuck, okay, so Tony's doing this after all. Fury, at least, does Tony the courtesy of not looking outwardly smug, and making it clear that he's waiting for Tony to go on. Tony makes himself think—what's a fair trade for crossing his moral line, exactly? One thing's easy, at least. “The schematics for my warship will never go to commercial markets, or blackmarkets, or anywhere but into the hands of Starfleet shipbuilders. If the schematics do show up somewhere else, I don't care how they get there, I'm making it my personal mission to destroy every single one of them, and then I'm coming after you.” That isn't an insubstantial threat, even to a man like Nick Fury.

“That's reasonable,” Fury says, clearly willing to negotiate now that he's gotten his way. Tony can't do anything more than hope he really means it.

“Two more things,” Tony says. “When you send the first of my ships out to war, I want to be transferred onto it as chief engineer. And I want complete and total oversight over the building process. Nobody's allowed to fuck up my ships.” Let Fury take that as Stark pride if he wants to; Tony just wants to be sure he can limit the number of people who need to learn the workings of his warships intimately, and can keep an eye on the people he can't keep out. 

“That'll mean ending your time serving under Captain Rhodes,” Fury points out, and Tony has to smile at that.

“Yeah, well, I trust Rhodey not to fuck up out there.” Tony doesn't even need to say the second half of that—they both fully understand how much Tony doesn't trust Fury and his people.

Fury smiles, the expression the closest thing to agreeable that Tony's ever seen Fury wear, and says, “I'll have the paperwork for your transfer done by the time you get me the schematics. No, don't get up, Stark—I can find my own way back out.”

…

Stardate 2259.238 – six months later

Tony spends a lot of his time insulting the Patriot, but he does it out of love, really. It isn't the worst of all the ships Tony's ever served on, and it doesn't even come close to the top ten of the worst ships Tony's flown privately. It doesn't live up to Tony's standards, sure, but then nothing does unless it's a ship Tony designed and built with his own two hands. At the very least, the Patriot can be trusted to fly in a straight line without somehow damaging her warp core, and to function unattended for a few hours without exploding.

Of course, every time Tony wanders up from engineering to annoy Rhodey on the bridge, you'd think everything Tony had ever said about the Patriot was true and the Patriot was perpetually minutes from self-destruct, from the way Rhodey reacts.

This time is no exception: the second Tony exits the lift onto the bridge, Rhodey immediately says, without even looking up from the paperwork his yeoman is waiting for, “Tony, what did we say about you coming up to the bridge when you weren't needed?” Seriously, it's like Rhodey has a sixth sense for where Tony is at all times—though, to be fair, that would be a pretty useless sixth sense, possibly even more useless than Tony's pathetic excuse for empathy. It's more likely that Rhodey's just bribed Jarvis somehow into letting him know when Tony's coming.

Tony grins, and says, “That I was the shining light of your life, and I should come up more often so you don't miss me?” Hill, Rhodey's first officer, snorts faintly, expression totally unamused; Rhodey just finishes signing his paperwork and looks up at Tony with his usual expression, half amused and the other half deeply resigned. “Rhodey, I know I'm fantastic, but exactly what terrible thing do you expect to happen in the fifteen minutes I'm on the bridge?”

And of course, _of course_ , it's right at that moment that the ensign working navigation says, “Sir, we have three ships approaching from the neutral zone with Asgard.”

Rhodey's expression speaks for itself. “Okay, to be fair, there's no way I could have seen that coming,” Tony says, and then shuts up so Rhodey can focus. He means it—seeing as Asgard's pretty much kept to its own side of the neutral zone since the conflict with the Federation twenty years ago, having three ships break the line now is weird, to say the least.

“Bring them up on screen,” Rhodey says, and this time he's not speaking as Tony's friend Rhodey, he's talking with the confident, commanding voice of their captain, the one everyone on the bridge follows without hesitation. Even Tony, who's gotten more reprimands for acting contrary to orders than any other officer in Starfleet—save possibly Jim Kirk, but then Kirk's always been a special snowflake—even Tony immediately obeys, when Rhodey uses that voice to give commands. This is what Rhodey does best, after all.

On the view screen, three single-pilot warbirds come into view, and Tony whistles in honest admiration as he watches them move. Damn, he'd heard Asgardian ships were a beauty, but it's one thing to hear and another thing to watch them dance across the black. Tony closes his eyes and imprints the ships on his memory; if he can figure out the matter to antimatter mix that's letting them move that fast without losing power in the long term, it's possible the warship schematics under construction in his quarters are going to get a bit boosted.

In the course of doing that, of course, Tony winds up plotting their trajectories in his head, and says out loud, “You do realize two of the ships are chasing down the third, right?”

When Tony opens his eyes, the ensign sitting at navigation is glaring him down, and Tony gives the guy a shit eating grin and shrugs. Not Tony's fault he can run zero-grav physics in his head faster than the ensign and his computer can. Come to that, the ensign must be new on the Patriot; just about everyone else on this ship is used to Tony stepping on their toes occasionally. The glaring stops when Hill turns in her seat and asks, sharply, “Ensign?”

Nobody fucks with Maria Hill and lives to tell the tale, and clearly the ensign's at least picked that much up already. “He's right, sir,” the ensign says, and to his credit at least his tone is professional.

“Orders, Captain?” Hill asks.

“Let them do whatever it is they're doing, so long as they don't endanger our ship,” Rhodey says, after a moment's thought. “Asgard won't thank us for stepping in.”

Tony can tell, from watching the ships fly, that they have limited offensive capacity; to work up that sort of speed, most of the engine power would need to be used solely for propulsion, which wouldn't leave much over for photon weapons. So, if there's a fight happening, it's going to be one based on agility and skill at the helm, not on firepower.

With that realization in mind, Tony knows within the first two minutes of the fight which of the ships is going to win.

The pilot of the foremost ship is an absolute _artist_ , coaxing every last drop of speed and maneuverability out of zir vessel, responding that half-second faster than the other two warbirds—and in prolonged maneuvers, those half-seconds add up fast. Tony watches as the first pilot forces the other two to lose safe distance between them in order to follow zim, and then starts flying quick, twisting patterns that bring the two following ships closer and closer together on every turn.

The end of the fight is inevitable, but it's still beautiful to watch: the pilot of the first ship makes one last sharp twist through space, and the other two pilots can't compensate quickly enough to avoid a collision. And—Tony realizes, and doesn't deny he's impressed as hell—the first pilot clearly has knowledge of how the ships are engineered, too, because the collision happens at just the right orientation to damage critical systems. One of the following ships shudders at the hit, and then goes dark, its power at least temporarily down; the other buckles at the collision, and there's a brief, soundless explosion, feeding off the oxygen in the life-support of the warbird, before the vacuum of space suffocates the blast. Both warbirds are too crippled to continue pursuit.

“Beautiful,” Tony says, because he can appreciate artistry when he sees it. There's a soft chorus of agreement from the bridge crew.

“Sir,” the communications officer says, breaking the moment, “we're receiving a hail from the remaining Asgardian ship.”

“Answer, and put it up on screen,” Rhodey says, and a moment later their view of space disappears, replaced by a view of the inside of the Asgardian warbird.

The ship is a beauty; the pilot, on the other hand, is a wreck. He's got darker shadows under his eyes than Tony's ever seen on another living being, his dark hair is in complete disarray, and what little of his skin is visible above his clothes is covered in bruises and cuts, some of them still bleeding. Honestly, the guy looks like he should be lying down in a sickbay somewhere, not flying anything.

Of course, considering the guy is also instantly recognizable as Loki Laufeyson, nobody really focuses on the bruising.

“I'm Captain James Rhodes of the U.S.S. Patriot,” Rhodey says, and his tone has gone past commanding now, into outright sharp. “State your name and designation, hailing ship.”

Laufeyson smiles, a thin, sharp expression, and raises one eyebrow. “You know my name,” he says, and his voice is rough and tired. Tony can't see Rhodey's expression at that, but clearly it's displeased, because Laufeyson says, “If we must, then: I am Loki Laufeyson, and my ship the Sleipnir.”

“You're on the Federation side of the neutral zone,” Rhodey says.

“I am also declared a war criminal on Asgard,” Loki says, bluntly. “Let us not play games, Captain Rhodes; for once I would rather speak plainly.” 

“If we're speaking plainly,” Rhodey says, “then it's worth mentioning that the only time Asgard has broken its silence towards the Federation in the last twenty years was to send notice of your status as a war criminal. Officially, you're to be treated as extremely dangerous and possibly deranged.”

Laufeyson laughs at that, and it isn't a happy sound. “What a flattering portrait the Allfather must have painted, to convince even his enemies of my guilt. I am no danger to you or yours, Captain Rhodes, any more than I am guilty of that which I am accused.” Rhodey opens his mouth to say something, and Laufeyson continues over him, expression hardening as he speaks. “The only crime I committed, Captain, was being discovered to be of Jotunn descent while named a prince of Asgard.”

That—Tony blinks in surprise, and is aware most of the bridge is reacting with him, because if that's true, Laufeyson is lucky to still be alive. And the thing is, Tony's stunted, half-functional empathy has decided to pick this moment to inform him that Laufeyson really isn't lying, which. Shit. The bruises, the cuts, the false accusation of war crime, all because Laufeyson happened to be born on a neighboring planet rather than Asgard?

“He's telling the truth,” Tony announces to the bridge, and taps two fingers over his heart when Rhodey turns to watch him, their long-established sign for Tony's empathy. 

The sharpness is gone from Rhodey's voice when he turns back to face Laufeyson, and says, “Why are you here, Mister Laufeyson?”

“I seek political asylum from the Federation,” Laufeyson says, smiles that sharp smile again, and then collapses, unconscious, over his console.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you got this far and enjoyed, as usual, feel free to leave comments either here or at my tumblr: http://skollwolf.tumblr.com/
> 
> I love hearing from you guys, and am always happy to discuss thoughts, concerns or questions you might have. (And seriously, I'm going to go back and answer comments soon.)


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